XFree86® Project Mission Statement

The Mission Statement consists of three parts.

The first part defines the Project's primary
goals. These goals represent the spirit of the Project, and capture
its essence and reason for existence. This section may be amplified
and expanded, but is essentially unchanged throughout the Project's
existence.

The second part defines the Project's
formal organisational structure. This part may change as needed to
best meet the Project's goals.

The third part defines the Project's
daily operational structure. This part may change as needed to
meet the Project's goals within the context of resources
available.

1. Primary Goal

The primary goal of the XFree86 Project is to produce XFree86®
and to make it the best freely-redistributable Open Source
implementation of the X Window System by implementing it on as many
hardware and software platforms as possible, by enhancing and
extending it to meet the needs of new hardware and software platforms
and by licensing it in a manner that is the same as or equivalent
in spirit to the original MIT/X licence. The Project seeks to work
towards this goal in a manner that gives the strongest weight to
the technical integrity of the ideas, implementation, and individuals
involved, with the commercial viability and influences from commercial
or political interests being non-goals and explicitly not
addressed.

2. Organisation

The formal legal entity that is The XFree86 Project, Inc. is
charged with providing the infrastructure required for achieving
the Project's goals, which includes:

Being a nonprofit organisation able to accept donations to
help fund the necessary infrastructure.

Providing a corporate entity that can join other organisations
for the benefit of the Project's goals.

Holding and protecting the XFree86® trademark.

Protecting the Project against undue influence from other
organisations.

Licensing technology (including patents and trademarks) from
other organisations under public use and redistribution conditions
consistent with the Project's goals, only when this is of benefit
to the Project's goals.

Setting the policies by which the Project operates and ensuring
that those policies are consistent with the Project's goals.

The XFree86 Project has a group of active developers that is charged
with maintaining the technical integrity of the Project and ensuring
that the technical direction of the XFree86 is consistent with the
Project's goals, which includes:

Resolving conflicts that may arise between different technical
solutions to the same problem.

Overseeing the CVS source repository, and enforcing relevant
policies so that it remains consistent with the Project's goals.

3. Operation

Volunteer individuals who support the Project's primary goals
determine the Project's operation, and the technical direction is
determined by those contributors whose concrete ideas and proposals
are backed up with implementations or the resources to implement
them, also in consideration of the Project's primary goals.

The Project currently provides the following:

A public mailing
list (devel@XFree86.org) open to
all for the discussion of all technical and development issues
related to XFree86. This is the forum that should be used for
everyone interested in the technical aspects of XFree86 and for
everyone interested in contributing to the future direction of
XFree86.

A public mailing
list (XFree86@XFree86.org) open to
all for the discussion of bugs, problems and user-support issues
related to XFree86. This provides a forum for those using XFree86
to seek help from the XFree86 community at large.

A public mailing
list (forum@XFree86.org) open to
all for high level discussions about XFree86 and related technology.
This provides a forum for open communication between all groups
interested in XFree86.

A publicly readable CVS
repository that allows everyone to follow and track the XFree86
source tree and its development. This is accompanied by a publicly
readable mailing
list that receives all commit messages for that repository.

A publicly accessible bug
tracking system that should be used to submit bug reports,
bug fixes, feature requests, and code implementing new features.

Regularly tagged
snapshots from the main development trunk of the CVS repository.
These tags happen automatically, and are intended to provide
regular checkpoints rather than self-consistent or stable versions
of XFree86. The Project doesn't currently have the resources to
produce frequent stable releases of XFree86, or to maintain stable
branches of XFree86. Parties interested in seeing regular official
stable releases of XFree86 may consider sponsoring them. Others
may form their own stable "releases" from the code publicly
available from here and elsewhere in such a manner that they cannot
be confused with official XFree86® releases.

The XFree86 Project encourages everyone to do their work and make
their contributions to the development of XFree86 in the manner that
they find most comfortable and productive, and using our public
mailing lists ensures seamless integration and full participation
of the XFree86 development community.